Record maintenance
Maintenance of remote IR more complicated than maintenance of printed resources, for example serials.
1. When a new serial’s issue arrives, cataloging staff adds holdings/ item records and sometimes notes to a bibliographic record. One can compare previous issues of a serial with a newest one. IR iterations could hardly be compared because there are not previous discrete issues: the resource changes as a whole.
2. A serial record is monitored with a frequency of check in a new issue. The IR’s updates are hard to monitor regularly. After a record is in a local database, a cataloger does not monitor its future updated unless a special policy for it would be established.
Currently, we do not have a policy for this and IR records do not have a maintenance procedure.
In order to establish a local policy, we can look at the national policy for a record maintenance if such a policy for IR is established.
The standards for BIBCO records can be considered as a national one. The BIBCO participants’ manual includes general rules for record maintenance of all type of materials. Integrating resources are mentioned there briefly together with multipart monographs.
The BIBCO manual defines record maintenance as “the process of ensuring the continuing accuracy of a BIBCO record through additions, changes, or deletions.” The manual describes four clauses when a record maintenance is required. Record maintenance
“should be undertaken in the following circumstances:
* To correct errors, or;
* To reflect changes in the publication (multipart monographs and
integrating resources), or;
* To reflect changes in policies and practices used within BIBCO for
bibliographic control, or;
* To reflect changes to authorized forms of access points.”
Comparisons of the WSU local practice with national standards for record
maintenance show that
(1) errors’ correction (typos and errors in descriptive cataloging) is
included in work both original and copy catalogers on the daily basis;
original catalogers also correct obvious errors in subject cataloging in
the process of complex copy cataloging during a process of 1st time
cataloging; after that corrections perform occasionally if cataloging
supervisor revises staff records, or somebody points out the mistake;
(2) changes in integrating resources are not reflected, and policy for is
not exist; it should be developed in the future; the most obvious is a
needs for fixing of broken links (the 856 field);
(3) IR is a new type of material and no local policies and practices for
re-cataloging of older records were not developed yet (I am personally not
sure if the WSU catalogers would see it as a priority);
(4) LTI updates the WSU authorities on a regular basis; it includes IR
headings as well as all other types of materials.
In sum, the regular maintenance of IR records executed for a goal No.4 by
outreach services. The goals No. 1 and 3 probably do not need to be
performed on a regular basis. The different issue is a goal No.2. There is
a need to establish a record maintenance policy for changes in IR, and
probably a specific policy will be developed in the future.
There are also another BIBCO source of information on record maintenance.
It was developed specifically for IR by the PCC Task Group on
Implementation of Integrating Resources.
The final report of this group was written in 2001 and among other issues
included suggestions how to identify currency of a bibliographic record for
updating Web sites and remote databases. The Task Group proposed to use (1)
the 936 field for update information, or (2) subfield “5” to identify
currency of data within specific fields of a record, e.g. the 856 data.
Both ideas were not established on a national level, but can work on a
local level. The WSU library can consider a usage of some local field to
reflect changes in the resource, or/and put data to subfield “5” to reflect
updates of the particular fields.
This is possible also to use a URL checker for all the WSU library
electronic resources including updating Web sites and databases.
Another idea is to develop a list of the most important electronic IR and
monitor them on a regular basis (for example, with frequency 3 or 4
months).
The topic of IR record maintenance was only briefly mentioned in this
manual. This topic is very new. The national standards still are not formed
for this area of cataloging. The WSU policies for IR record maintenance are
waiting for their development. A special manual on this topic could be
written.
In conclusion, I would like to mention that this is obvious that we will
have more and more IR in the future in the WSU collection. It will push
ahead development of cataloging rules and maintenance policies for this
type of library materials. This is an important assignment for a cataloger
to adjust national standards to the local needs and create a interim local
policies in the new areas where national standards are not established yet.
Manuals are updated as needed. Please, e-mail susan.matveyeva@wichita.edu with suggestions and questions.
